Mapping applications are widely available as software over the Internet; examples of such mapping applications are BING Maps and GOOGLE® Maps. These applications provide road maps of locations specified by a user, and can also provide driving directions to a location or information about a location or its surroundings. For example, mapping applications may identify to a user restaurants or other points of interest in the vicinity of a specified location.
Some current mapping applications offer an option commonly referred to as “street view”, in which a user of the application can view a geographic location from a first-person street-level perspective. In response to a user requesting a street view for a particular geographic location, for example by entering a particular street address into the mapping application and clicking a button labeled “street view”, such mapping applications provide a view as if the user were standing or driving on the street at that location. This street-level view is commonly provided in a viewport that displays a portion of a 360-degree panoramic image. The user can typically change perspective within the panorama by virtually rotating the image, updating the viewport with different portions of the panoramic image to view the first-person scene at that location from different angles of rotation.
Some mapping applications also present additional media such as user content in association with particular geographic locations. User content is commonly obtained through the Internet from online sources, such as photo sharing websites. For example, user content may be digital photographs taken by users from various walks of life and uploaded to a photo sharing website. Examples of known photo sharing websites are the FLICKR® website and the PANORAMIO® website. Often, a digital photograph is geotagged, i.e., encoded with metadata indicating the geographic location at which the photograph was taken. A photograph can be geotagged at the time it is taken using a global positioning system (GPS)-enabled camera, or the photograph can be geotagged later through the photo sharing website. Geotagged user content can be accessed through the Internet to be displayed in mapping applications.
When a user selects a geographic location to browse in a mapping application, a list of user content (e.g., user photographs) geotagged with nearby locations can be presented. A user can choose to view a particular user photograph, for example, by clicking on the photograph's link or thumbnail in the list. The selected photograph is then presented to the user as a separate viewing screen.